06 Benefits of High-Intensity Weight Training

Coming up in this episode we'll weigh in on the immediate physiological benefits of high-intensity training. What is the difference between weight training and weight bearing exercises? And steady state exercise, what is it and how does it compare to high-intensity weight training?

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The transcription to this episode is below:

06 Benefits of High-Intensity Weight Training - Transcript

Intro: You’re listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that’s so effective, you’d get a week’s worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1.

Tim: Welcome in to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards the founder of the Inbound Podcasting Network back with Adam's friends and colleagues. Sheila Melody from the InForm Fitness Toluca Lake location and Mike Rogers from the New York City location. And across the hall from Mike is the founder of InForm Fitness and author of the New York Times best seller, Power of 10: The Once-a-week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, Adam Zickerman.

Coming up in this episode we'll weigh in on the immediate physiological benefits of high-intensity training. What is the difference between weight training and weight bearing exercises? And steady state exercise, what is it and how does it compare to high-intensity weight training? Adam, Mike and Sheila, good to have you back on the show and looking forward to today's discussion. Adam, let's start off with the debate between high-intensity training and your, say, run of the mill exercise routines that we're all familiar with.

Adam: Why is high intensity so important versus just getting on a treadmill and doing that steady state, getting the heart rate up a little bit and spending the time, maybe an hour, every single day, which is generally what's been recommended and why do I say, and why do plenty of people in my camp say, that's the, you know, big deal. I mean, like, you don't have to do all that. And this is what we're finding out. First of all, a lot of people like to say to me that I don't think that steady state cardio is worth anything. I don't say it. Plenty of studies have shown that the physiological benefits that we see can come from steady state exercises. Certain markers have definitely been shown to have improved.

Tim: I have a question Adam, if you don't mind, for the layperson like me, what is steady state exercise?

Adam: Steady state exercise is doing cardio to the point where you can read People magazine for a while.

Tim: Got you.

Steady state cardio is the kind of cardio that passes the talk test. That you can have a conversation with somebody next to you while you're doing it. And steady state cardio gets your heart rate up maybe 20/30/40 percent above its normal heart rate sustained, steady state.

Got you.

Sustained. Steady-state activities as such has definitely been shown to cause certain physiological improvements. They've been shown to raise certain markers that we look for. Some of these markers are oxygen consumption, improved oxygen consumption. They call it the O2 max. Certain anaerobic and aerobic enzymes go up. Glucose sensitivity is improved as a result of steady state exercises. These are all good things. You want to be able to handle glucose better. In other words, somebody that is out of shape, their ability to -- if they eat something that has sugar in it, their ability to metabolize that sugar is very slow and keeps your blood sugar up high and that leads to obesity and all kinds of metabolic problems.

All these kind of markers are improved from steady state activity. What I'm saying is you don't have to spend that kind of time to improve those markers to that level. Turns out, you spend a lot less time doing it but it's a lot more intense actually, you can improve those markers equally and that's what the McMaster's studies have shown. At McMaster University in Canada they compare steady state activity and the markers of improvement to high intense exercise. And you'd think that the group that did the steady state activity for like for hours a week versus four minutes a week, that they would have at least a little bit better improvement of those markers compared to just four minutes of exercise but as it turns out there was zero improvement compared to the high-intensity group. In other words, the marker that went up for the steady state group, hours of exercise per week were no better than the group that just spent about four minutes a week exercising at a much higher intensity.

So, it begs the question, why are we doing all that steady state activities if the markers that we decided are markers of improvement -- if high-intensity exercises are improving those markers equally, why are we taking the scenic route. So, the question is this and this is it. I don't think that if you like to do steady state cardio and you want those physiological improvements, we're all big boys and girls, go ahead and do it. If you want to spend the four or five hours a week doing it, fine. If you also understand the risks associated with doing four or five hours of exercise a week at a steady state level. If you understand those risks because a lot of people don't understand but if they did understand these risks because they still want to do it that way because that's what they like to do, it's certainly better than sitting on a couch doing nothing and those risks are orthopedic risks and overtraining risks of course. And, you know, quite honestly, some people don't see it this way but I see it as a risk of time, I mean --

Tim: For sure.

Adam: You only have so much time on this Earth. I mean, like, I don't want to spend four hours a week of my time exercising if I don't have to. I'd much rather be with my family.

Tim: Mhm [affirmative] and that's the part that's most attractive about this exercise, your exercise, the high-intensity slow motion strength training system as opposed to riding a bike for four hours a week. I mean, who has time to do that unless it's something that somebody really enjoys to do or they use it as a recreational activity. I do not have four hours a week to work out and I'm sure the majority of the people listening don't have four hours a week to work out especially when the benefits are equal [laughs] if not better.

Adam: Well, that's the point. So, we have choices. So, we have choices. When someone ...